The Wonder Approach: Rescuing Children's Innate Desire To Learn

Children of the last twenty years have grown up in an increasingly frenzied and demanding environment, so that on one hand education has been rendered more complicated and on the other, the essentials have been lost to view. In order to ensure their future success, we feel that we must fill our children's schedules with endless activities that cause leisure, spontaneous activity, and the experience of nature, beauty and silence, to fade out of their lives. Childhood has often become a veritable race toward adulthood, which distances children more and more from the natural laws of childhood. A constant stream of loud and flashy stimuli disturbs the only true and sustainable learning that exists in them: that of calmly and quietly discovering the world for themselves and at their own pace, with a sense of wonder that goes beyond mere curiosity for the unknown or interest in novelty. According to the Wonder Approach, learning is a wondrous journey guided by a deep reflection on what the natural laws of childhood require: respect for children's innocence, their pace and rhythms, their sense of mystery, and their thirst for beauty. "The Wonder Approach to Learning is a most informed and intelligent article on learning." Psychology Today About the author: Catherine L'Ecuyer is Canadian, now living in Barcelona with four children. She holds a law degree from Laval University, has an MBA from IESE Business School, and an Official European Master of Research. In Canada, she worked as Senior Counsel for a telecommunications company and in Spain she has taught university classes and worked as a consultant. The Swiss journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience published her article "The Wonder Approach to Learning," which established her thesis as a new hypothesis/theory of learning. In 2015, she received the Pajarita Prize from the Spanish Association of Toy Manufacturers for "promoting a culture of play in the media," and was invited to speak to the Education Commission of the Congress of Deputies of Spain and has served as a consultant to the Spanish government regarding the use of digital technology by minors and to the government of the state of Puebla in Mexico concerning preschool reform. Her first book, The Wonder Approach (22 editions in Spain), has been published in seven languages. She has also published Educar en la realidad (6 editions in Spain), on the use of digital media in childhood and adolescence. A recent video interview she did as part of the Aprendemos Juntos educational project (BBVA-El País) has received over 7 million views in the course of a few weeks. She currently collaborates with the Mind-Brain Group of the University of Navarra and is a columnist for El País, one of the most-read newspapers in Spain.